1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to image forming apparatuses, more specifically, to a cleaning mechanism of a conveyor belt for conveying a recording medium.
2. Related Art
In the cleaning mechanism, the conveyor belt is often stretched simply between two tension rollers (driving roller and driven roller) having a small diameter, for example, in order to miniaturize the conveyor belt mechanism in an image forming apparatus for transferring a toner image of yellow, magenta, cyan, black on a recording paper (recording medium) and forming an image. A configuration of contacting the front end of a cleaning blade made of rubber at a predetermined pressure is adopted when cleaning the surface of the conveyor belt. The cleaning blade is arranged at a predetermined angle to a non-conveying surface, which is a surface of the conveyor belt that is not the paper conveying surface.
However, the cleaning blade configured as above may be bent in the belt conveying direction. Normally, the bending returns (restores) to its original state by the elastic force of the cleaning blade itself when the drive of the conveyor belt is stopped. However, since the space on the back surface side of the conveyor belt stretched between the two tension rollers becomes extremely narrow when the conveyor belt mechanism is compact, as described above, the bent front end of the cleaning blade may touch the tension roller and the like, and may not return to its original state (not restore by the elastic force of cleaning blade itself) even if the drive of the conveyor belt is stopped.